Williams welcomes President Falk

Adam Falk was officially welcomed as the 17th president of Williams College on Saturday, at the school’s annual convocation ceremony. I didn’t go, but I’ve read his induction speech and I’m honestly pretty impressed. Institutions and their memory are very important, and so often, in today’s era of “management” as some separate professional calling, history and tradition go out the window. President Falk is young, from Johns Hopkins, and has no previous connection to the College, so it was very pleasant and reassuring to see he has absorbed a lot in his months in office. He was very clear in explaining his understanding of the College’s past, and how it lays the foundation for its future.

“We learn a lot about ourselves and our communities through the stories we tell about who we are,” he said Saturday. “These stories are important not because they represent the only true history, but because in returning to them we are choosing what we wish to reaffirm in our identity.”

The stories he told were familiar. He talked about Mark Hopkins, the pioneering theorist and practitioner of the American liberal arts tradition who was Williams president from 1836 to 1872. He mentioned Robert Gaudino, who pitched the idea of experience-based learning before it was fashionable, and President Jack Sawyer, who in the 60s and 70s guided the college — sometimes kicking and screaming — to become the national institution it is today.

Perhaps what impressed me most is the way Falk mentioned the big disputes of its ancient history, especially the great schism of Williams early history — the foundation of Amherst College in 1821 with, as any first-year Eph will tell you, half the Williams library he had stolen. (this is a fascinating story, as the early histories of the college tell it, not just for the school but for Berkshire County. Since the school’s founding in 1793 until the split, rumors about moving the college were constant, with nearly every sizable town west of the Connecticut River — Pittsfield, Stockbridge, Northampton, Greenfield — lobbying hard for it for decades. But that’s a story for another day). As Falk notes, this was the “existential crisis” that defined Williams to this day — that it would be small, remote, and intense. He also mentions the famous Haystack Prayer Meeting of 1806, when a group of devout students prayed under a haystack during a thunderstorm that if they were spared they would dedicate their lives to missionary work. “A Williams education, as this history indicates, provides not merely a private good, found in the betterment of individual graduates, but a public good, measured in the impact those graduates have on the world,” Falk said.

Falk talked about the college’s future goals in broad strokes, which is probably appropriate for the occasion. He mentioned “the responsibility to be a national leader — maybe the national leader — in innovative and effective teaching.” He also made mention of the importance of faculty in the debate. “It recently has become quite fashionable in some circle — including, oddly enough, academic ones — to bash the professoriate as selfish and venal, more interested in perks and ostensibly esoteric research than in teach students,” he said. “I say to you now, categorically, that I reject this slander, certainly here at Williams and also widely across American higher education.”

The other notes are that Williams must be aware of the school’s role in the larger community. “We must simultaneously be local and global, building a very specific, Berkshires-based Williams that could only be found in this valley, while reaching out far beyond to prepare our students to be effective citizens not only of this country but of the world.” He also mentions its diversity efforts — “the great broadening of our College community.” Williams continues to fight the good fight; few colleges have the resources to do this right, and the effort the school makes is important.

The idea of the “Berkshires-based Williams” is an important point that I would have liked to see expanded. Last week, I covered for iBerkshires.com the annual meeting of the Northern Berkshire United Way, in which most of the region’s leaders raise funds for a variety of important but not altogether sexy causes. Williams is by far the largest employer in the region, and by extension, it is one of the biggest donors. But somehow, its presence there is modest. In scanning the list of donors, I noticed only about two who I recognized as clearly connected to the College (granted, I don’t know everybody). No one in any leadership position was connected to the college. Locals will quickly note that many Williams folks contribute to the Williamstown Community Chest, a town-centered fundraising agency (which supports many of the same agencies), but I think that the fact that hundreds of people attended this breakfast, and I saw only one Williams official suggests a deep historical divide between the College and town and the rest of the region — that is, North Adams and Adams.

All together, it was an interesting speech, and a cause for hope. The College faces a number of major challenges — the economic downturn has hurt it as much as many other institutions. The college just came through a painful round of early retirements, and Falk has begun an interesting discussion about reorganizing the college’s administration. These are interesting times.